I took some time before writing about Madrid because I needed to tone down the excitement a notch. Because travelling is so subjective and if I wrote this the minute I got back home I'm pretty sure it would have been all in caps and lots of exclamation points haha. But seriously, I never visited one city which made me feel so at home before this trip. It has everything I ever wanted: glorious art museums, my favorite football team in the world (spoiler alert : the next post will be exclusively about this), clean streets, magnificient arhitecture, amazing history (I basically wanted to move in the Royal Palace!), great shopping and INCREDIBLE PEOPLE! I will make a comparison to Paris, because it's always been the city of my dreams. When I visited Paris, it had all the things I previously mentioned (minus the Real Madrid team) but somehow I felt a sort of unease. I mean, it wasn't so safe to walk on the main boulevards at night (not the case for Madrid!), everything was more expensive and people were polite, but in Spain they're so loving and helpful! It's like they have a 6th sense for tourists who need help. I was sceptical at first because I never encountered such an hospitality in a big city, maybe we were blessed with this incredible experience because we stayed in the lovely neighborhood of Lavapies.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you must know how much I love Andy Warhol. Although Andy may have taken his art lightly at times, famously saying "art is what you can get away with" I disagree with anyone who thinks what Andy did was not art. In my opinion, he is the father of the most fun & joyful art to watch: POP ART. My personality is a paradox, I admit: I can read for months books of history and stare in front of a Botticelli paintings for hours, but there is also a side of me who reads Mindy Kaling's crazy funny books and won't leave the sketches section Andy made for Vogue & so many fashion brands over the years! I don't get people who say you can be only into one type of culture/art. Pop art history is so fascinating, there are so many commercials which Andy invented and which are still going strong today and I bet you have no idea, I'm a fan and I just learned about the Absolut sketch on my trip to Madrid. Somehow, luck follows me when I visit a city: it's the third time I went somewhere and I found a pop-up Andy Warhol exhibition! This one in Madrid is really ground-breaking, with over 300 works of Andy, so much history and massive gift shop with all Andy Warhol things inspired (good thing I had my bff Simona with me and she only let me buy the small souvenirs, otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have spent most of my money on day one!). You can find it until May at Caixa Forum Madrid. I was so impressed with the fact they recreated one of Andy's project which people aren't really familiar with: CLOUDS. Andy made this from the NASA fabrics, in an era when everyone was obsessed with silver because it represented space and our hopes for the future. It's shocking how you can enter a room and just play with giant clouds, no they don't feel like helium balloons, you just want to move there, you could see everyone with a giant smile on their faces as they entered the room!

After this whole incredible experience, we visited the Prado museum. I loved it so so much, Velazquez is a genius, I'm so happy I got to see so many of his works, the famous "Las Meninas" is so moving, we just didn't want to leave its side. Also, the Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymous Bosch left me speechless. I recommend visiting the Prado museum before the Royal Palace like we did because the museum is full of paintings of all the royals of Spain and when you get to the Royal Palace you'll be like "I know them all! I know their history! This king was painted by Velazquez". After that, we took a stroll and we ended up in front of this iconic Metropolis building and then enjoyed the exctiment on Gran Via because it was match night- Real Madrid was playing against PSG in UCL. It was one of my biggest dream to see the match on the Bernabeu but we couldn't afford the tickets. Still, watching the match in Madrid is a whole different experience than at home- the whole city freezes, everyone is so focused & you should hear the noise&joy when the team scores. They won 3-1 and it was a perfect way to end our first night in Madrid!

Hello, I'm back and in the mood for blogging! Maybe my absence is because I took Drake's "I'll be back in 2018 to give you the summary" lyrics to heart haha. But there are 3 major reasons I couldn't find time to blog lately:

1. Finals season- over now, and I'm not gonna lie, it was the most exhausting in my four years of Med School.

2. There aren't any photographers available on finals season (obviously) plus it's hard to look fabulous in the snow, I don't know how so many girls do it, I just get a Rudolph nose 1 minute into the shoot haha.

3. I have a new passion project. Eating healthy is one of my major 2018 resolutions and I started an Instagram page to document my journey, plus I wanted to share with all of you my sugar-free, low calorie & sometimes gluten free recipes. You can find them all on DietAndDesserts.

This is the outfit I wore on one of my favorite December days of 2017. I was in Bucharest for a Medical Congress and I planned the best day with my best friend Simona- I finally had the famous American pancakes at Maison Des Crêpes and I got to hang out with S.'s close friends and I love the fact we bonded over medicine and food because they're both passionate cooks, I learned a lot of cool tips that day. After that, it was time for a stroll at the Romanian Athenaeum, my favorite place to take photos in Bucharest (thank you S. for these photos & patience) it always reminds me of Paris. Then came the highlight of the day, I finally got to see the National Museum Of Art and I was mesmerized with Stefan Luchian's flowers, as always, Nicolae Grigorescu's work and of course, Brancusi's "Wisdom of the Earth"- I really got the chills when I saw it. We ended the day with a trip to Ikea and I was just over the moon.

I wore the exact same outfit yesterday and I remembered I never posted these photos. I love this blush pink dress I got in the Black Friday sales at Zara, still can't believe how cheap it was! But the star of the outfit is the Forever21 backpack I got on that same trip in Bucharest from Forever 21 - I mean, the velvet, the color, the size! It's the backpack I've been looking for my whole life!